Hours on duty question

[Joser23]

I was wondering how many hours do police officers work a week? How many days off? I know each department will be different

[P5Ret]

When I was retired out on an injury, we were working 12 hour shifts with rotating 3 or 4 day weeks. When I started way back when we did 5 8's.

[TrailerparkTrash]

Full time cops, usually 40-hour work week. It can vary with schedules such as a "3/12" (3 days @ 12hrs per day), with a makeup day sometime during the month to cover the missed hours. ------> 4 day weekend

Here are some other examples departments use:

- A "4/10" schedule, (4 days @ 10hrs per day). ------> 3 day weekend
- A "5/8" schedule, (5 days @ 8hrs per day). ------> 2 day weekend

- Or, a variable schedule like the first 3 days are 8hrs and the 4th day is 16 hours, thus giving the officer a "40hr" work week with a ------> 3 day weekend.

[OldShooter32]

Ours was 10-4 with two teams. One was "Mon-Tue" and the other "Thu-Fri" since they were off those days every week. Then you had every other weekend off, so you had four days off every two weeks and two days off the other week. Everyone worked Wed and that was for training, holidays and special projects. We loved it. Tack a holiday onto your four day off weekend and you'd have a mini-vacation.

[9mmepiphany]

5/8 and 3/12 require the same staffing, 4/10 requires 50% more officers...so unless, you need the overlap, 4/10 going away is just a less economically sound stretch a budget dollar.

Having said that, the 4/10 shifts are more traditional for Patrol.

I once worked a job site that had two 8 hours shifts and one 10 hour shift...for coverage and briefings

[Invisible_Dave]

So short staffed most of us are averaging 50-60 a week with forced OT. We do 38 a week with 8 hours payback every 28 days.

[friedokra]

Back when I was a police officer, my department had 3/12.5 with a 10 hour "makeup day" each month. That's three 12.5 hour shifts, for 37.5 hours every week, and the 10 missing hours were made up on a single shift every 4 weeks. Shifts were usually 0600 to 1830 and 1800 to 0630. There was always a few officers on a regular cover shift, as well as makeup day guys.

[Spyder]

Variable week to week and even day to day, and I don't think I've ever worked the same set of hours two days in a row. But I'm unique.

[ddnguyen9]

3 - 12.5 hour days with a 10 hour day each month.

[NorCalXJ]

Our police agencies are short handed here, and they have variable schedules.